“Hell’s Kitchen” is barreling toward the finale already, but wait….now there will be a 2-3 week break for playoff baseball. Anyway, when they resume in early November there will be 8 contestants left and they will probably keep up with the two-episodes-in-one thing until just after Thanksgiving. Either way, here is our rapid-fire recap of last night’s doubleheader:

Last night’s “Biggest Loser” finale on NBC was a true showdown of four contestants who really deserved to be there. No real game play was evident this season, anyone who started to play the game was swiftly eliminated by everyone else. Anyway, this was a live event, but they went through and showed each of their collective journey, especially how they all had to weigh in in front of their hometown friends and family at the start. This included the ubiquitous showing of Daris saying “I will do everything I can to make you proud,” in which he sounds like an overweight robot. I mean, the producers of this show love that clip so much, that you could seriously create a drinking game around every time they show it.

Last night’s finale of “The Biggest Loser” on NBC featured the big showdown between Danny and Rudy, and the result of that was not exactly earth-shattering. But there were a couple of other shocking revelations during the show, which we will get to shortly.

First, they brought out Amanda and Liz, to see who America voted into the final 3. Each of them looked quite the same as when they broke camp after running the marathon four months ago….but I digress. The person in the finale was Amanda, and we had to hear her thank America once again for voting for her. Woo freaking hoo. Liz, meanwhile, looked kind of pissed, but let’s face it….neither of them was going to beat Rudy or Danny. And how about Liz being a grandmother of nine at the age of 49? Now that’s impressive!

Last night on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” there was one more weigh-in before the live finale this coming Tuesday night. The final four would have one more opportunity to reach that finale and have a shot at the title, while two of them would be subject to a vote by all of us to determine if they deserve to be or should be in the running for it all.

The episode began with each contestant going home for 60 days after being on the ranch for a few months, and after showing a bunch of fluff with families and once again seeing Danny as a “rock star” from when he was like 17, seeing Curtis Stone cook for Danny and his family, and having the trainers visit each contestant at home and coach them a bit (we know there is more than coaching going on between Bob and Amanda)–it was time for the big jolt. That they would each be going back to Los Angeles to run a full marathon before weighing in one more time. Yikes. They did this last season and my legs wanted to buckle while sitting on my couch. But if Big Ron from last season could walk it, anyone could.

Thanks to the NCAA basketball tournament for giving us the term “Final Four,” because now it’s used in every walk of tournament life. Same with NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” which reached the final four of this season last night.

The episode began with the final five–Rudy, Allen, Liz, Amanda and Danny–talking about Rebecca having been eliminated and now Amanda was afraid she no longer had allies. Then CNBC finance personality Suzy Orman made a guest appearance and talked about how obesity is costing our nation and individuals so much money….really, almost as much or more than cancer. Yikes. They had a challenge in which they walked on treadmills while answering quetsions about how obesity relates to money. Pretty scary stuff! If they got a question correct, they would earn $1000, but if they got it wrong, their speed on the treadmill would increase.